Gamification to improve customer experience.

43.8 BILLION DOLLARS. According to the Entertainment Software Association and The NPD Group, that’s how much the gaming industry made on 2018, a whooping 18% more than 2017.

Why do people spend so much money on games?

Because we love to play. Since our childhood, games have fulfilled our need for adventure. Playing triggers our imagination and allow us to explore and keep our sense of wonder and creativity.

Photo by Allen Taylor on Unsplash

So, why do we need to make our clients play?

There’s a concept that’s really popular nowadays called GAMIFICATION. It refers to taking game-design elements and processes and applying them to non-gaming contexts.

Gamification used to be addressed using the term game-mechanics. E.g: These companies are using game-mechanics to boost sales. But, while game-mechanics was used to describe a resource that was implemented, gamification was coined to refer to experiences that customers undergo. That’s why it stuck.

Let’s say you have a product or service. You might teach an online course, run a Shopify store, or maybe you have a coaching or consulting business. Nowadays, the competition is fierce, regardless of your industry. One of the most effective ways to find that differentiating factor is by creating a satisfying customer experience.

Gamification tremendously enhances the experience our product or service delivers. It makes it more interactive and taps into that affinity we all have towards plating.

Gamification, at the same time, promotes motivation and engagement. It makes users want to come back. It leaves customers wanting more.

So, in order to include gamification in your customer journey and experience, you must use game-design elements in your business, which is in this case the non-gaming context.

Here are a few tips in which you can gamify your client experience.

PRIZES.

Why don’t you give your client prizes (a.k.a free stuff)

Aliexpress recently included a Freebies section in their mobile app in which users can apply for free gifts each day.

Everyone likes free stuff, so there’s no harm on opening the app, browsing through the freebie section and picking yours. The odds are not as if you were playing the lottery.

Now, here’s the catch. You can only apply for one a day. Aliexpress is incentivizing users to go to the app and browse ONCE PER DAY. These are the behaviors that can be triggered:

1. Users browse through the section and find something really useful that they really “need”. Boom. Aliexpress just placed a product in someone’s mind, without the need for ads.
2. Users pick their freebie and, given the fact they don’t have much else to do, they keep browsing and purchasing other stuff.
3. Users spend more time in the app, Aliexpress user metrics go up, Aliexpress becomes more valuable.
4. Users generate a HABIT out of logging daily into the app.

This is a clever example of how adding a simple feature can generate more revenue, decrease ad costs, promote user loyalty, decrease uninstall rates and improve the overall customer experience.

POINTS & REWARDS.

Creating a points system encourages your clients to take periodical action towards a goal. Can you think of companies doing this?

For example, credit card companies partnered with airlines so they can give their customers travel miles.

Creating point-based systems is an extremely useful way to increase customer loyalty. No wonder they’re called Loyalty Programs.

It keeps them coming back. Why? Because shifting to another company becomes too much of a risk.

The worst thing that can happen to a gamer is lose his or her progress. Same thing with customers that have accumulated, for example, travel miles. Besides, miles expire, so long-term hoarding is not a viable option.

Uber is doing it with the Uber Rewards program. Nordstrom has the Nordy Club. Chipotle’s Rewards. Starbucks Rewards. Sephora Beauty Insider. And the list goes on and on.

So, why are these loyalty programs useful?

1. They keep people HOOKED to your brand or business.
2. They create a habit of going back to you that’s hard to break.
3. Rewards are part of how our brains work and are tied to dopamine release (The Happy Hormone).
4. They create the feeling of exclusivity by being part of a club or community.
5. We all like free stuff. Period.

PROGRESS BARS

There’s a really effective way to ensure your customers take the actions you, as a business, want them to take. Progress bars.

There’s nothing more frustrating as an uncompleted progress bar.

I recently reactivated my Freelancer.com profile. When I was filling it out, I found myself taking certain action I don’t usually take. Things like connecting my Linkedin account and adding a credit card for no apparent reason. But there’s this one action that stopped me on the stop and left me wondering: What the heck am I doing?

I was inviting 10 of my contacts to create their own Freelancer account. Why? Because it was the next 8% I needed to almost complete my profile progress bar.

You’ll encounter progress bars when reaching new categories or unlocking new rewards in Loyalty Programs or even when taking online courses or enrolling in other experiences that require users to measure progress

Why use progress bars?

1. Encourage users to take the actions you want them to take.
2. Tap into the common sense of obsessively wanting to complete processes (OCD, anyone?).
3. Establish a series of steps that follow a logical or strategical order designed towards making your users achieve a specific goal.

Here are some other game-design elements that you can imple

BADGES.

We all like badges.

Photo by Natalie Scott on Unsplash

Badges give us personality. They connect with our sense of identity. They tell a story. They show the world who we are and what we like.

Using badges throughout your customer experience will allow your users, clients or customers to acquire a degree of personality within the experience you’re providing.

There’s another cool attribute to badges. They are not gifted, they are earned.

They are degrees of recognition that promotes healthy competition and collaboration throughout the experience.

Here’s one example. On Freelancer you can take paid quizzes to endorse your skills. Each passed quiz earns you a badge. Imagine you post a job and 2 people with the exact same qualifications appear. There’s just 1 difference. The number of badges they have.

Most people would go with the freelancer with the most amount of badges. Amirite?

Badges allow your experience to be more personal. They give your users motivation towards unlocking them and they can be used to rank, differentiate, segment and motivate.

Here are some other game-design elements that you can implement to provide a more satisfying customer experience:

LEADERBOARDS.

These help users rank according to their success. It encourages improvement, self-actualization and action by tapping into one of our primitive traits: competition.

Leaderboards are mostly used within companies, for example to rank sales persons, and they allow us to visually hierarchize some people over others.

AVATARS.

Some products or services allow users to create avatars, or personas. These are digital representations of themselves they can relate to. They can improve their avatars, change their appearance and customize them based on the user’s needs and personality.

I haven’t quite found a company implementing avatars to their full extent, but Netflix is worth mentioning.

Gamification gives customers a reason to return, log back in, or constantly check your product or service for updates, prizes, points, etc. It creates loyalty and allows your product or service to connect with your buyers on a deeper level.

There’s just one thing. Customers want a game-like experience, not a game. So don’t overdo this. No one wants a product or service with a rewards point system, leaderboards, avatar creation, badge unlocking feature, daily prizes, and progress bars on every step of the experience. It’s just dizzying.

So pick one or two elements and test them out. Validate them and see how your users respond to it. Do they like it? Do they enhance the experience or do they crowd it with unnecessary features?

Eventually you’ll find those elements that make sense and that are coherent with the experience you want to deliver.